This proposal leverages strengths across the University of Michigan to support the Michigan Congenital Heart Center as a productive collaborator, leader, and innovator in advancing efforts of the Pediatric Heart Network (PHN) toward improving care and outcomes of pediatric and congenital cardiovascular disease. Michigan Congenital Heart Center investigators have played key roles in many prior and ongoing PHN studies, including leading the Single Ventricle Reconstruction Trial (the first multicenter randomized trial in the pediatric cardiac surgery), directing the biorepository for several PHN studies, and leading the PHN Integrated CARdiac Data and Outcomes (iCARD) Collaborative. Continued participation of centers with strong clinical and research infrastructure, and experience in leading multi-center collaborative research is needed to further the important work of the PHN. In addition, there are new challenges in the current era, including conducting research more efficiently, better utilizing the ever-increasing volume of healthcare data, and investigating novel therapies and devices to drive further improvements in outcomes (particularly longer-term outcomes), and tailoring these to specific clinical and genetic profiles. Our proposal has two aims ? first, we aim to serve as a collaborative participant and leader in furthering the work of the PHN to address important questions in pediatric and congenital cardiovascular disease. Our track record of success, and unique and comprehensive resources, infrastructure, and expertise will ensure our ability to participate fully across PHN studies and lead efficient and collaborative research. In particular, our expertise specifically related to the study of novel therapies and devices, assessment of longer-term outcomes (including neurodevelopment), and underlying genetic factors, will allow us to lead efforts to address key questions in these areas. Our numerous faculty with independent research funding, training resources, and mentoring expertise will foster our ability to compete successfully for extramural research funding to further support PHN activities. Second, we aim to lead innovative data integration and sharing efforts to foster novel and efficient PHN research. Our investigators have extensive expertise in this area, including pioneering initial linkages across large datasets in the field (supported by NHLBI R01 funding), and creating a state of the art platform to share information across centers within the Pediatric Cardiac Critical Care Consortium (PC4). Through our leadership of the recently formed PHN iCARD Collaborative, we will work to bring innovations in this area to the PHN, including integrating existing and emerging data to allow novel studies otherwise not possible, and to support more efficient conduct of research. Participation and leadership of the Michigan Congenital Heart Center will foster continued success of the PHN, and allow the network to meet the challenges of the current healthcare and research environments to continue to advance the treatment and outcomes of pediatric and congenital cardiovascular disease.
This proposal leverages strengths across the University of Michigan to support the Michigan Congenital Heart Center as a productive collaborator, leader, and innovator in advancing Pediatric Heart Network efforts toward improving care and outcomes of pediatric and congenital cardiovascular disease.
